Andre and Wendy: Caltagirone, Villa Romana and Enna

Saturday

We have reserved a car for the weekend to go exploring in the province of Enna. The car rental only opens at 9am, but we stopped by yesterday and were told they are usually always there by 8:30, so we arrive at about 8:45 and hit the road. It has been a couple of years since I drove a standard car, but it comes back quickly. A little whiplash for Andre in the beginning, but I get it sorted quite quickly, should be good by the time Nancy and Ron get here. We are the first renters of the car, I hate that, every scratch will show.

Took a long time for GPS to kick in, so we drove to the train station and parked as we knew it was away from the smaller streets and we thought it wouldn’t be too hard to get going from there.

I have 3 things on our itinerary for the weekend, all in the province of Enna, which in the interior of Sicily, about a 2 hour drive from where we are staying.

Our first stop is in the town of Caltagirone, a town famous for its ceramics. Like our other trips in Italy parking is always lots of fun, spots marked in yellow are for locals only, spots in blue are paid parking, spots in white are free. We would rather walk a km into town than deal with the crazy parking, so first free parking lot we say we parked. This meant a lot of steps for us to climb to get to the center of town.

What is the biggest draw to the center of town, La Scala, 142 steps which between each riser are covered with hand painted ceramic patterns, no two risers are the same. I don’t think these steps are built to code, they are way too big, it was a hard walk up. But, you can make the excuse that you are admiring the ceramics and take lots of breaks. Lots of little ceramic shops on the outside of the stairs, we stopped at one to buy a ceramic stopper for wine bottles, something we don’t have at the apartment, souvenir shopping done…

Very nice replica of village from 800 in the church in Caltagirone

La Scala in Caltagirone

Church at top of steps

La Scala from a distance, so impressive

The Duomo

Almond trees are in blossom

Close up of clock tower

Notice the sides of the bridge are all creamic

Pricky pear cactus everywhere today

Yellow Mimosas are all in blossom, these are a traditional gift on International Womens day

Lots of great views along the way

Our next stop is about 30 minutes away at Villa Romana Del Casale. It a UNESCO world heritage site and it is an amazing spot. It dates back from the early 4^th century and was in use until the 12^th century when it was covered by a mudslide. It was hidden for 700 years and excavations only began in 1950. The excavations found beautiful mosaic floors that the colours had been preserved because of being hidden for so long. Now walkways have been built so you do not walk over the mosaic floors. It was thought to be a hunting lodge, and it is not certain who the owner was. There is an amazing hall that separates what were the private apartments and public halls that has the great hunting scene mosaic. It is 200 feet long. It depicts a lot of animals being captured and transported perhaps to Rome for entertainment. Well worth the visit, we spent nearly 2 hours wandering the grounds. The parking lot was huge, I can’t imagine how busy this place must be during busy tourist time, lots of bus parking available. The place was pretty much empty while we were there, so empty that when we went to buy our entry tickets for 10 Euro each he couldn’t change a 100 Euro bill so he let us in for 15 Euro.

Many rooms like these

Female atheletes

The great hall,

Cupid

Next we are off to the town of Enna where we will spend the night. The views on the drive today have been amazing, we keep catching glimpses of Mt Etna, but it is a little hazy today. Arrived at the town of Enna and parked where our GPS told us we were very close to our B&B. Two Euro to park overnight, always fun to figure out how to buy the ticket to display on your dash. This one you even had to put your license plate number in the machine.

The street the B&B was on was one of those streets that the numbers jump around. We have a little trouble finding the B&B, if we would have kept walking the first attempt we would have seen it, but of course we turned around and went by the GPS, oh well helped us get our 20,000 steps in for today. It is a cute little B&B, we have a huge room that looks like it has just been redone.

Got a map for the town and we are off. It is now 4:15PM and most things close at 5:00PM that we want to do, so we settle for just walking along the panoramic promenade. The views from here were spectacular. We had not had lunch yet, and it is now around 4:30, so time to find something to eat. We only find one place with views so it is settled. Get a menu and can’t believe how inexpensive it is, really the views were million dollar views, and spritz were 5 Euro each, how much is a drink at the Banff Springs Hotel now? One sprits turned into 2 each, and a platter that we will call lunch. Sun is setting, it doesn’t get much better than this. Oh, did I mention we were the only 2 here?

Back to the B&B for a nap, typical for Wendy after 2 drinks. Then back out for a walk and off to find some supper. Not all restaurants are open, but our B&B did recommend a pizzeria place, Wendy had pizza and Andre gnocchi. We got there at about 9PM and when we left most people were just arriving, nearly all of the tables had reserved signs on them. They really eat late in Italy! After dinner we walk the terraces again for some night views, what a great start to the week-end.